Report backs Delroy

Published Sat 20 Jan 2001

Issue No. 1731

High ranking officers have branded as 'naive' a senior black officer's report into the police's treatment of Delroy Lindo. He is a friend of Winston Silcott, who is still wrongly imprisoned for murder. Tariq Ghaffur, the Met's deputy assistant commissioner, said in his report that Delroy suffered 'systematic harassment' by the police and 'negative stereotyping'. Delroy has been stopped and searched 37 times by police since 1992. 'Nothing has changed with the police,' said Delroy. 'The Met want to blame Ghaffur because some of the truth has come out in the report.'

Two MPs have demanded a public inquiry into the death of Christopher Alder, who was unlawfully killed in police custody. Hull MP Alan Johnson and Burnley MP Peter Pike backed the call by Janet Alder, Christopher's sister, for the death to be investigated publicly when she met home secretary Jack Straw last week.

'Met is racist'

Three black 14 year old children were due in court on Wednesday facing the serious criminal charge of affray after an incident on 20 October 1999. Before the incident a group of young white men armed with baseball bats had entered the pupils' north London school and carried out a racist attack. Yet police officers targeted the three black schoolchildren as they were going home.

The police are under pressure after being condemned as 'institutionally racist' in the 1999 Macpherson report. But even police officers admit nothing has changed. 'Forces claim to be putting change into practice but we don't see that being demonstrated on the ground,' said Ravi Chand, chair of the National Black Police Association.

Staff in the Metropolitan Police say the force is racist. 'People are treated differently in the Metropolitan Police according to their ethnicity,' said over 56 percent of staff in a confidential staff survey of 18,000 officers and civilians. Nearly 400 police officers reported they saw racism in their unit 'very often'.